Arguments

After six months of increasingly hot and complicated wrangling, the international conflict over natural gas from offshore of Nova Scotia has boiled down to a question at its heart: How free is energy free trade?

Tossing aside arguments by an Arizona regulatory commission representative who came to San Francisco to articulate his state’s case, California regulators Thursday unanimously agreed to adopt proposed rules for mandating that the state’s major gas and electric utilities bid to keep up to 725 MMcf/d of firm capacity on El Paso Natural Gas serving the state to prevent it from being shifted to neighboring Arizona.

Later this month, a Nebraska district court will hear arguments from Kinder Morgan subsidiary KN Energy, which has charged several municipalities in the western part of the state with attempting to regulate the gas company’s rates by requiring it to pay into a state loan fund, and when it refused to pay the charge, enacting ordinances to not allow a surcharge on gas purchases.

Later this month, a Nebraska district court will hear argumentsfrom Kinder Morgan subsidiary KN Energy, which has charged severalmunicipalities in the western part of the state with attempting toregulate the gas company’s rates by requiring it to pay into astate loan fund, and when it refused to pay the charge, enactingordinances to not allow a surcharge on gas purchases.

Arguments opened last week in a $7.5 billion lawsuit brought byTransAmerican Natural Gas Corp. and its founder, Jack Stanley,accusing Coastal Corp. and its founder Oscar Wyatt Jr., El PasoNatural Gas, and William Wise, CEO of parent El Paso Energy, ofvarious illegal acts aimed at financially underminingTransAmerican.

Arguments opened this week in a $7.5 billion lawsuit brought byTransAmerican Natural Gas Corp. and its founder, Jack Stanley,accusing Coastal Corp. and its founder Oscar Wyatt Jr., El PasoNatural Gas, and William Wise, CEO of parent El Paso Energy ofvarious illegal acts aimed at financially underminingTransAmerican.

While producers and end users were marshalling their argumentsagainst plans by TransCanada Pipelines Ltd. for long-term ratedesign changes to adapt to the budding era of competition, thepipeline opened up a second front, calling for an 11% hike in itscurrent rates effective Jan. 1.

Arguments likely raged all day Friday over whether the gasmarket was overreacting to Tropical Storm Bret or not. But as evena member of the “overhyped” camp reluctantly conceded, there was nodenying that cash prices ignored mild northern market-area weatherand the usual drop in weekend load to achieve gains of up to adime. The smallest showings of flat to only about a nickel highercame at western points, which are more insulated from potentiallosses of Gulf of Mexico production.

After two years of hearings and oral arguments, FERC yesterdayfinally gave Granite State Gas Transmission the go-ahead to buildits controversial liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in the townof Wells, ME.